Software systems commonly make use of application-specific data formats. Such data formats, being somewhat unique to the individual software system, are not necessarily recognized by third-party applications. In some cases, the data formats may be proprietary to a particular software application making such data formats difficult to access by other software systems.
When the user of such a software system has the need to import data from the software system into third-party applications or to otherwise access the software system's data, considerable development time and expense may be expended to derive the source data format. For example, an end-user of the above described software system may wish to generate customized reports based on data used by the software system. Without prior knowledge of the source software system's data format a significant amount of development time may be expended to derive this foreign data format.
Some software systems enable the importing and exporting of widely accepted file formats, such as the Comma Separated Value (“CSV”) format, for example. Data formatted in CSV uses a separator character, usually a comma, to separate each field in the record. A double separator represents blank or unfilled fields. The field contents can be surrounded by quotes or double quotes, in case the value contains a comma or embedded blanks. Unfortunately, certain proprietary software systems do not enable users to export to such widely accepted formats.
Consequently, there is a need for methods and apparatus that address the shortcomings of prior art software applications that fail to enable data to be exported in a widely recognized file format. A need exists for methods and apparatus to access data in an application specific file format and generate an export file in a widely recognized, non-proprietary file format.